The present invention relates generally to systems for evaluating and responding to emergencies threatening human life at facilities such as government buildings, public gathering places, or any area occupied by one or more persons. More specifically, but without limitation thereto, the present invention relates to monitoring a facility for the presence of fire and smoke that may threaten human life within the facility. Even more specifically, the present invention relates to a computerized system that monitors the presence of fire, smoke, structural damage, and a variety of other collateral damage related to a fire emergency that threatens human life within a facility and generates a response, such as an evacuation plan and control of resources and equipment within the facility, including heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, to minimize human casualties within the facility.
In addition to the threat to human life at facilities posed by accidental fires and the release of hazardous chemical substances in smoke, there has been an increase in apparently random and heinous terrorist attacks in public gathering places, such as government facilities and offices, large business facilities, hospitals, airports, train depots, subway stations, border crossings, and even aboard public carriers, such as airplanes, trains, subways, and ships.
While loss of human life within facilities such as described above as a result of accidental or intentional fires is almost inevitable unless extreme precautionary measures are taken, such as wearing gas masks, the number of human casualties due to injury and death may be dramatically affected by the type of response made against the fire and the speed with which the response is carried out.
Disadvantageously, the complexity involved in analyzing what is an appropriate response to any given fire depends on the location within the facility of the fire, the state of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, weather conditions, temperatures inside the facility, time of day, concentrations of personnel, building conditions, and the type of incendiary agent employed. Unfortunately, in the panic of a terrorist attack, personnel in facilities are presently ill-equipped to cope with these complexities and the stresses inherent in such an attack. For example, an appropriate response might include operating an HVAC system to minimize the transport of smoke from one area to another while ventilating other areas with as much fresh air as possible. At the same time, personnel may need to be routed through the facility to exits or safer areas.
While in some cases the prior art has provided crude automated responses for fires, these automated responses have not adequately addressed the problem of analyzing different possible responses depending on the specific circumstances and selecting the response most likely to result in the minimum number of human casualties and property damage.
A method and apparatus are described for responding to an emergency at a facility by analyzing a plurality of fire threat conditions to determine possible responses to a fire emergency and selecting a response to the fire emergency for minimizing human casualties within the facility.
The present invention may be characterized in one embodiment as a system for responding to a fire that threatens to cause human casualties within a facility. The system has a plurality of inputs for receiving signals indicative of fire threat conditions and an emergency response module coupled to the inputs for analyzing the fire threat conditions to determine whether a fire emergency exists and for generating a response to the fire emergency for minimizing human casualties within the facility.
In another embodiment, the present invention may be characterized as a method for responding to a fire emergency by receiving data characterizing fire threat conditions and facility conditions, evaluating a plurality of emergency scenarios, generating a response to each emergency scenario, and storing the responses for rapid recall.
In a further embodiment, the invention may be characterized as a method for responding to a fire emergency by detecting the fire, determining incident specifics of the fire from the detection, and rapidly implementing a previously stored response to the fire as a function of the incident specifics.